OUGD403: SB1- Alphabet Soup

Jumbled Letters
For this brief we are required to produce a type face. Eventually the whole alphabet, but initially ten letter forms of different styles and designs. To inspire us and give us a 'jumping off' point we were all give an existing type face to alter and a buzz word to give us a concept. 

My typeface: Helvetica

My buzz word: evolve

Mind maps- standard way to begin brain storming, writing out initial ideas in a badly organised spider diagrams, and filling up the pages with potential gold for later. It was bizarre- I had a lot of history information on my typeface thanks to the book 'Just my Type' (Simon Garfield) that I had just finished reading that day, and as a result my helvetica page was full whereas ideas for evolve were few and far between. I found it very difficult to not be 'literal' with my thoughts.

Helvetica mind map

Evolve mind map

To get the ball rolling on the ideas front we looked to each other. Passing buzz words and typefaces around the table we wrote our own interpretations on the back. We were instructed to "write down the first thing that pops into your head" and pass it on. At the time I saw very little use in this- it was interesting to get different ideas and a different perspective on my buzz word but I had already begun to develop some ideas of my own (based annoyingly off of my literal interpretations) and I didn't think too much of them. (It turns out, however, the best concepts I've designed so far are thanks to these buzz words and different opinions, if I hadn't had them I'd be stuck trying to translate idea to page getting increasingly frustrated until I snapped hurt my hamsters out of malice.) 

"The first thing that comes to mind"

So I began my research into helvetica- it's history, it's beginnings it's many, many uses whilst developing my concepts and considering what the typeface was going to look like. I had hit on a brilliant idea linked to my literal/initial interpretations of the buzz word evolve based around 'evolving' type. I had considered the word evolve and evolution and set myself out some research tasks to explore these ideas through type. I gathered examples of text from the original publication of 'On the Origin of Species' by Charles Darwin, as well as examples of his handwriting to help inspire unique letter forms. I found examples of text used in the periodic table of elements(and was a little gutted to find it wasn't helvetica).  I also researched a little into biblical text and typefaces to see if I could create a gothic version of helvetica text, however this would prove to be difficult. 

Bible texts in original Gutenburg and modern day St James. 

Original publication text

Charles Darwin's scribbled handwriting

The periodic table frustratingly in arial

A History in helvetica (well, technically courier...)
Helvetica- brain child of Eduard Hoffman and Max Meidinger, was born in 1957 in the Haas foundry of Münchenstein  to refresh and redesign a very thirsty and dry commercial market. It's a sans serif (in the grotesk sans category) and works beautifully because of it's simple modern shape and form, no flourishes, devoid of history, clean and unbiased- it was an eon away from the gothic typefaces of Nazi propaganda, the serif stiffness of British type and the swirly handwritten flourishes of the French. Practical, simple, here to do a job- it's Swiss in origin and in character, yet it has a distinct warmth lacking in many formalised typefaces, rounded edges allow eyes to glide from word to word (depending on format- it works beautifully for publishing, not so well on the internet) like a man in a three piece suit who goes around barefoot. Here are some examples.

American Apparel has based it's entire brand off of helvetica, you can take three steps in their store without seeing it again. 

The slight alterations give helvetica a lot more weight in the AGFA logo

It became hard to identify helvetica in day to day settings (especially with all the minor alterations companies make to to the typeface) and often I found myself mistaking it for arial (in one case I took a lot of images in a gallery of what I thought was helvetica typography, only to later discover it was arial)and so I found myself a handy identification guide on the internet and it sorted out the problem. 

Helvetica or Arial?

Interim Crit

The feedback I received wasn't exactly what I was expecting- I had hoped for more specific critiques  from my fellow students. It was the first crit so understandably people were nervous still I was slightly confused with majority of the feedback thrown my way. I was told to develop my 'fossil' concepts further, to try things representing sedimentary layers and possibly hinting on geodes as well as develop my squashed idea- perhaps working in a different medium other than pen and ink. This was all well and good I had things to do, but the honest opinions of my classmates on my work? I haven't a clue. I don't know which idea is the strongest, I'm not sure which of my concepts were translated the clearest and I don't know whether they even look good. I mean, they said they 'looked good' but was that genuine or out of nervous behaviour? Hopefully this fear will fade as the year goes on. 

OUGD401 Context of Practice: Task 1

What do I Love?

When asked to gather examples of 5 designers we admire I'm not going to lie, my stomach dropped. I know what I like, I can point it out easily, describe it to you in detail, but ask me for specific designers, artists, studios- well I'll draw a blank. I don't do names too well.

So I feel to give you a rounded version of who I am and my opinions on what I consider beautiful it would be best to present it in 'categories'. So here they are, number one...

Clean/Modern

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I like white space when it comes to my text, when bodies of text are treated as images, positioned with enough space around no to clustering or confinement forming a 'shape' of text instead of plain expected columns (even though columns are nice too) then I', happy. Typography is always so clean and beautiful- devoid of clustering and detail but still full of effort and talent and it astounds me how simple block shapes can form pages of great visual beauty. I would also like to mention how much I love colour- not too much, but when a page has a colour 'theme' (see image 5 for my favourite example of this) it makes it visually pleasing, well for me at least. However, despite all of this balance is the key- a balance of colour, text, and white space. A piece of design could contain all the features I've listed above and still look awful if the balance is not met and the execution is poor. (But that'll usually be down to the designer being awful anyway, the principles are sound)

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Traditional

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I have a soft spot in my heart for certain 'traditional' styles and I've decided to group a few different styles and types under this one category just to keep this simple. So let me talk through them and why I love them. The Victorian-esque style is something that seems to contradict all 'good' design of today- it's over crowded and very detail orientated but it oozes class and tradition and Victorian/British Empire values- of which I've always been a little proud. The complexity and skill that goes into some of these works is one part of my fascination (the natural history illustrator would've taken years to master their craft and had to study excessive amounts of biology, anatomy and life drawing before they could draw something that looked real- and most of the time they were sketching off of fleeting moments and half destroyed samples. It's a skill that's sadly dying) the other is the sense of warmth they bring. Nostalgia may be the wrong word as I have very little recollection of the Victorian era (not being alive for it and all) but there is a safeness that comes with tradition- an understanding that you can only gain from having already been there and done that. Although on a design front they may be irrelevant for today's market but it's still something to admire simply because of how beautiful it is. 

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(Image 8- canal boats)



Dark/Broken

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There's something about the dark extremes of humanity that's annoyingly fascinating (I say annoyingly because people tend to get concerned when you speak of these images as beautiful- but they are). I like to be made to feel uncomfortable. If an artist, photographer or designer can make me feel awkward, creeped out and insecure from marks on a page then that is a wonderful skill. What I like most about these types of images (as with traditional) is the way they make me feel, I like to be scared and heartbroken and creeped out just as much as I like to laugh and get angry and smile. There is something about these images though, that I do find inherently beautiful, be it the technical skill, or the mood they create- I can't quite put my finger on it but they are wonderful to me.

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Handmade

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A combination of things make me love handmade items (especially books- I love to make them myself cut them, stitch them, hold them while I sleep. Books are wonderful) firstly is the time. Nothing beautifully handmade was thrown together in a night (unless the person is especially skilled) it takes time; also a genuine love for what you're doing in order to dedicate large amounts of time. Love, time, dedication. In so many areas of design it feels like a lot of love is left out and certainly a lot if not all the personality is gone. Understandably you couldn't produce a hand made poster to an energy company looking for a new branding campaign. Some design needs a lack of personality, a clear and distant head, but when design pops up that is handcrafted, out of joy not for any real purpose (especially in books- I'll shut up about books soon) it oozes individuality, every little detail can tell you about it's creator whether they intended it or not. There's a specific beauty that comes from handmade items and that is imperfection. No matter how skilled a craftsman is there will always be a mistake- it makes an item more human which, in my opinion makes it more beautiful. 

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Comic

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I felt comic was important to mention because it is my roots. I only taught myself to draw because I wanted to see myself as a comic book character, I gained an appreciation of art through comic and graphic novels and a lot of my personality I can trace back to my 12 year old comic book and anime nerd origins. I still find comic 'style' visually pleasing- even if it does feel a little childish in comparison to some of my other loves. I suppose this is why I love it though, the childish, brightly coloured hope inspiring images depicting wonderful super heroes who saved you from loneliness and would never be defeated. I do like the simplicity of it as well- bright coloured, black block shading, tone created through mark making- like with Liechtenstein's work- comic can translate into the design and art world well and even if it doesn't fill me with the same level of awe as it once did comic will always have a place in my heart.

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How to...

Creating a Problem

'How to...' a design task based around solving problems. The first- creating the problem. In pairs we discussed and listed 20 problems encountered by first year students at the Leeds college of art.

Pairs were then teamed up into fours and the problems combined to create a new list of 20, fours became eights and the process repeated again. 

The first 20 problems we came up with

The list was then condensed into a final top ten consisting of problems we all considered to be the most important.

The revised 20 problems

The dreaded 10

Then all groups joined together, each offering up their 'number one' problem to create a final list of ten. These ten became the basis for the next stage the project.

The final 10

Solving a Problem

The class were divided into groups of six and each group was assigned a problem from the 'top ten' list. The assignment- solve the problem in a graphical way, the problem- How to... keep fit and stay healthy on a budget. We began by discussing different solutions ranging from market stall shopping to cheap gym memberships, local jogging routes and healthy recipes, we listed all of these on an A3 sheet as we went.

Initial ideas sheet

Organising ideas into categories 

As we talked over ideas we considered our target audience (students- particularly freshers) and how we wanted to communicate our information. We felt that we were informing our audience (possibly educating) and that a non patronising friendly tone would work best for our product. We also assessed our content as it stood and realised there was a lot- certainly too much for a poster or pamphlet so it was decided that a booklet would be the most effective way of getting across our information. Our main source of inspiration came from an A6 sized handbook we were all given in the first week of term: The Creative Notebook.

The Creative Notebook

There are a few reasons why the Creative Handbook is appealing, the first being practicality. It's compact, easy to carry around, contains a good amount of information and it's relatively inexpensive to make. Yet it remains visually pleasing, well designed and impressively laid out. 



Gathering Research and Creating Content

After organising all our initial ideas we divided our problem into three groups healthy eating, exercise and budgeting, two people were assigned to research each area whilst taking the other groups into consideration as we did. Tom and I were to research healthy eating and so I browsed the internet for healthy home cooked alternatives to take away meals, lists of super foods and their health benefits, websites with tonnes of student recipes, sites with discounts and food offers and finally a smoothie recipe to cure a hangover (keeping it relevant to our target 
audience).

After sharing what we'd all discovered on each of our subjects we began to gather all the essential pieces of information and wrote out what would be going into the final booklet. 

Gathering research

Organising content

Once we were clear on what was going in, it was time to decide the order in which it would read. We drew a few simple boxes and labelled what would go on each page whilst estimating how many pages each subject was going to require- the flow of the book began to take form.

Putting pages in order

Finally we had to settle on what typefaces to use. Drawing inspiration again from the creative handbook we chose to have the headers in a scribbly almost handwritten style and the body in a simple sans serif typeface. We ended up settling on Brain Flower for the headers and Calibri for the body, and although I wasn't 100% behind the Calibri decision, the beauty of Brain Flower more than makes up for it.

Crits and Feedback

We received some very useful feedback when it came to crits. They liked the amount of information on our recipe pages but said we were lacking anything that explained calorie content- suggesting a traffic light system like on the front of food packaging. They also felt the recipe pages were a little dull and suggested adding illustrations to give them something more visually appealing. It was also heavily suggested that we add something about alcohol to keep it relevant to our student audience. There were a few mentions of our colour scheme being unorganised with a few pages having 'double printed' colour making them too dark so colour is still an issue we need to sort out.